Hi again, Diana and other companions on the arduous road to Quality !
Second post in the same day, so I'll send this one tomorrow night.
It would seem that we still have prblems figuring out *exactly* what we
are going to do with the MoQ and how much we want to apply it to our
lives, Diana's post being a (good) point in case.
Diana McPartlin wrote:
> So by choosing lower patterns of morality we maximise our morality overall.
> But, we often get it wrong. Even if Rob had known about the MOQ in that
> situation, I doubt his reaction would have been any different. The MOQ
> allows us to choose lower patterns sometimes so he would probably have
> decided his action was a rational and moral suppression of the intellectual
> to preserve the social for long term benefit.Or maybe he wouldn't have. But
> either way the answer is ambiguous. You could make the codes prove anything
> you wanted.
>
> If the MOQ to be of any use as a moral theory (and seeing as this is
> its primary purposes then it really ought to be) then we need some theory on
> when it is moral for the lower codes to prevail.
>
Do we really *need* it so much ? You don't seem so sure (if you permit
my saying so).
To place morals at the center of our attention seems a good thing to do,
but we must beware just how much we want this, lest we fall into the
traps every religion seems to have fallen into. Just as truth must be
taken provisionally, I think "good" should be faring under the same
attitude. Morals should also be taken provisionally, until something
better comes along, that's the lesson I believe I found in RMP's books :
we shouldn't hold on to anything so strongly that we can't see what's
really happening around us. That's also, fortunately, what you seem to
understand, Diana (if I understood the rest of your post right). ;)
> Are the US President's indiscretions a victory for the intellectual level or
> the death of the social level? Who knows? We all have opinions, but who
> really knows? Even those of us who know all about the MOQ don't know. Maybe
> thirty years from now we'll look back and we'll know, but now, it's anyone's
> guess. The MOQ codes help us clarify the situation. Maybe they help a bit.
> But not much.
Not much indeed. And I'm not sure they would have helped Clinton had he
known about them.
> By the time you've "realized" dynamic quality, you'll
> have already done it. The notion that you see it and then follow it is only
> how you analyze it after the event. We say "pursue" dynamic quality because
> it's easier to think of it like that. But in fact, if you're doing something
> as a result of analysis then, by definition, it is static. Any action that
> has been thought about is therefore immoral, because it cannot be dynamic.
> Dynamic action is without any intention at all.
>
> "You only did one moral thing on this whole trip and that was when you
> couldn't think of your usual intellectual answer."
>
Right on spot, Diana. We seem to believe the same thing, so why the
speech about the MoQ's use for building a moral theory ? What would you
do if you had such a theory ?
> David has argued that to be moral we should examine our lives. I think
> that's right, but it depends what you mean by examining your life. Examining
> it, means being intellectual perhaps, but it's also crucial that you base
> that analysis on the truest empirical evidence you can find. Intellect is
> quite easy, it's the empirical awareness part that we tend to have trouble
> with.
Right again. I have trouble understanding why the beginning of this post
is so different. Would you care to expand of the subject ? I'd be really
interested to hear why you think the MoQ should help us to build a moral
code. Or do I misunderstand you ?
> I would say Hitler probably did examine his life intellectually, in the
> sense that he thought and wrote about it. And I don't think anyone could
> argue that the Germans aren't intellectual. If anything they're the most
> rational, logical, classically minded nation on the planet. How does the
> joke go? In heaven the British are the comedians, the French are the lovers
> and the Germans the engineers. In hell the British are the lovers, the
> French are the engineers and the Germans are the comedians. Static patterns
> are immoral because they are not the way things really are. Hitler may well
> have examined his life intellectually, but that doesn't mean he was honest
> about it. He didn't look reality directly in the face and evaluate it
> without preconceptions. He had all his intellectual reasoning figured out,
> and didn't need to be bothered with the truth. Perhaps it was because he
> believed what he had written, instead of attending to what he empirically
> saw that he messed up.
>
Despite the slur on french technology (and being half-british, the one
on their... lets say romantic prowess) , I really like this one ! ;^)
That's the trap I talked about in the beginning of this post. Building
your life on unshakable codes turns life in one of the most static trap
imaginable. Just ask any fanatic about it.
The purpose of the MoQ is IMHO purely intellectual, and perhaps
something else too...
Ever heard about the 'horizon d'attente' ?
It's a concept I came across in my literature studies. It means that
whenever a new literary style comes forth, to be understood and
appreciated it must have something of past styles in it. It must be
dynamic to have artistic value, but no so much as to be unrecognizable
for the reader. If it is too dynamic, then its chances to find
recognition (a static latch) will be close to nil. Anything new must
still have roots somewhere, you can't build on pure chaos. When a new
style pushes the limits a bit further, then the 'horizon d'attente' is
also pushed further back allowing for other new styles to emerge, and be
recognized in turn. As such, it actually increases dynamicity (is that
english ?) because it creates a *space* for new possibilities that
couldn't have been recognized before.
I've found this concept to be applicable to almost everything : music,
science, language, phonetics, philosophy and, I believe, morals. When a
new understanding, in any of those fields, dawns, it creates its own
successors and increases overall Dynamic Quality.
That's what I believe the MoQ has done. It put us back on track on the
moral path, and allowed for new dynamic things to spring forward in our
lives and, I hope, in the long term, in society at large.
Please, folks, don't kill it with overlatching... that's the sad story
of every religion I know of...
Yours in Quality (I hope)
Denis
PS : Diana, I've just read your post on my point of view, so the
explanations I'm asking for are pretty pointless now. But still, I am
just too lazy to re-write this post and I think there are still some
things in there that might be of interest, so just ignore the irrelevant
parts.
Happy to see we agree anyway, and yes, I think Pirsig really thought he
had found this science. But then, we often hit something of importance
even if we miss our intended mark.
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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